Uganda – Why NRM leaders keep trying, and failing, to reform their party

Among other decisions, the CEC members agreed to endorse
President Yoweri Museveni’s “sole candidacy” in the 2021 elections, meaning
there should be no challengers from within the National Resistance Movement
(NRM). The CEC also agreed several reforms to the party’s structures and
procedures. These changes include
reversing an earlier reform, which barred top party officials from also seeking
elected office, and eliminating the secret ballot in parliamentary primaries. The
idea is that party members will, instead, line up behind their preferred
candidate, a procedure last used in the 1980s.

The CEC’s resolutions still must be voted through at the
next NRM delegates’ conference, scheduled for November this year. The support
of conference delegates is all but guaranteed, though, and if need be, there is
always the option of deploying police around the conference hall, as happened
at the 2014 conference.

What then, if anything, is the significance of these
proposed changes?

There is nothing remotely surprising about the “sole candidacy”
resolution, which paves the way for Museveni to extend his 33-year-long
presidency. Indeed, in late 2017 already, the NRM leadership pushed through a
constitutional reform lifting presidential age limits, making its intentions to
keep Museveni in power perfectly clear.

The only point of interest relating to the “sole candidacy”
resolution is that it came from the CEC and not, as in 2014, from the NRM parliamentary
caucus. Although the CEC’s intervention is more in line with official party procedure,
the parliamentary caucus had—in the past—assumed a prominent role in
championing key party decisions. Its absence from the story now may simply be
an indication that Museveni’s sole candidacy is a foregone conclusion; it requires
minimal mobilisation within the party, unlike in 2014 when he faced a challenge from an NRM insider.

More interesting, though, it may also be a consequence of mounting
frustration within the NRM parliamentary caucus, linked
notably to fallout from the age limits reform. Of note, and likely related, the
annual NRM caucus retreat, usually held in January at the Kyankwanzi National
Leadership Institute, did not happen.

Shifting focus to the CEC’s proposed party reforms, there is
nothing particularly new here either; the latest changes fit into a long series
of (failed) attempts by NRM leaders to secure greater internal party discipline
and organisational coherence. These repeated efforts do nevertheless raise important
questions, namely, how have NRM leaders tried to reform the party and why, by
their own admission, have they failed? As in, why has the NRM, despite the
unending lamentations of its leaders, remained a fractious and weak organisation?

Going back to the 1990s, under the so-called No-Party or
Movement system, NRM leaders were experimenting with various institutional reforms,
including investing in a would-be stronger secretariat.[1]
The 2005 multiparty transition was later cast as a fresh opportunity to
strengthen the NRM, to make it the “CCM of Uganda”, CCM being a reference to
neighbouring Tanzania’s better organised and more cohesive ruling party.

Come 2019, however, little has changed. Speaking to journalists at this latest CEC meeting, one party official acknowledged, “The truth is NRM is not well run. The squabbles have become too many, both at the national and lower levels […].”

The CEC’s proposed changes are a sign that it is effectively going in circles. As noted above, the CEC aims to reverse a previous decision, introduced in 2014, to bar top officials—specifically the Secretary General, Treasurer and their deputies—from seeking elected office. The rationale in 2014 was that, by barring officials from other political activities, the party would ensure they focused on their party duties. Five years later, though, party officials are caught up in their own internal disagreements, they complain that they no longer enjoy the same “status” as an elected MP, and they have not strengthened the party’s formal structures or mobilisating capacity. The CEC’s response—to revert to status quo ante—does not address the core issue of how to strengthen the NRM, although it may address the immediate concerns of these disgruntled officials.

The CEC’s change to parliamentary primary procedures is even
less promising. Candidate selection has proved a major challenge for the NRM, exacerbating
internal party divisions and parliamentary indiscipline. In a sign of this
dysfunction, the 2015 NRM primaries saw
168 petitions challenging results submitted to the NRM’s Electoral Commission.
What is more, in the ensuing general elections, more Independent MPs—many of
them disgruntled former NRM aspirants—were elected to Parliament than
opposition MPs.

NRM leaders have responded to these tensions with a series
of institutional fix-its, most notably abandoning an electoral college system in
favour of open primaries in 2010. The idea was that by allowing all NRM members
to vote in primaries, it would be harder for rival factions to bribe their way
to victory; as in, the relatively small number of electoral college members could
be more easily compromised than a large mass of voters.

This optimistic assumption, however, proved wrong. As noted,
allegations of malpractice during primaries remain pervasive. The CEC’s latest proposal,
i.e. to abandon the secret ballot and return to the 1980s practice of lining up
behind candidates, is hardly a solution. The queuing system was controversial
in the past, rife with accusations of bribery and intimidation. There is no
reason why it should be different today.

The only conclusion, reviewing the CEC’s latest decision, is
that it faces the same old problems but has yet to find a solution. Party unity
cannot be engineered through institutional means alone; rather, if it were
serious, the CEC would need to address the root causes of factional tensions.
These include wealthy NRM leaders’ tendency to cultivate rival networks within
the party as well as the lack of material support for NRM candidates, who
instead rely on their own private backers and resources.

The NRM top brass lack the appetite—or ability—to handle these
issues; indeed, it would require a fundamental renegotiation of how power is
distributed within the party. They instead resort to grand declarations—the
creation of a “CCM of Uganda”—accompanied by marginal and ultimately ineffective
reforms.

We are left with something of a paradox. The NRM’s electoral dominance has endured over several decades. Yet, NRM leaders’ control over the party itself remains—by their own standards—partial and unsatisfactory.

[1]
Much of this historical discussion draws on my PhD thesis, “The Political
Economy of Institutions in Africa: Comparing Authoritarian Parties and
Parliaments in Tanzania and Uganda”.